


How Do We Go On

by halfdemonvash



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Felix and Sylvain are BFFs but there's no rule there can't be a threesome down the line, Felix goes through a real hard time in this game doesn't he, Feral Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, I love the friendship between the Faerghus Four, I mean they all do, M/M, Sexual Content, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), just as a warning, when I say dubcon I mean like...major dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22011925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfdemonvash/pseuds/halfdemonvash
Summary: Dimitri looked at him like an enemy, like an ally, like something that needed to be broken. But Felix already felt himself shattering; felt the sword fall from numb fingers, knees weak and hitting the mud-churned earth.~Moments of Felix and Dimitri's changing relationship throughout their lives, up until the end of the war.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 134





	How Do We Go On

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this was originally supposed to be Just Smut, and then Plot happened. Whatcha gonna do.

It doesn’t take much for Felix to cry.

It’s a fact his father took in stride, but without bothering to hide his put-upon sighs. As if Felix never heard them. As if he didn’t already know there was no point trying to impress a man who’d put all his pride and hopes in his eldest son.

Felix knew he couldn’t go to his father when he was sad. He could go to Glenn sometimes, if his brother wasn’t busy, but usually he went to Sylvain. The older boy had a knack for getting him to calm down, for making him laugh and abandon whatever had made him so upset. Felix had tried to find comfort from Ingrid once, but it ended with both of them shouting and Ingrid bursting into tears, too.

He almost never went to Dimitri, because more often than not Dimitri was the cause of his crying.

They weren’t always sad tears. Mostly they were angry tears, frustrated tears, the only way he could get his point across without having to vocalize them.

_I’m upset. Help me._

And Dimitri made him upset. Always. Even though the crown prince of Faerghus was his best friend—and his future king, Rodrigue always reminded him sternly—they orbited one another like planets with different gravitational pulls, coming together and then springing apart, hip to hip and then fist to face.

It was always the stupidest of things, too. Dimitri making an offhanded comment about how well Glenn’s swordsmanship was coming along. Arguing when Felix said the Goddess wasn’t real. Reaching for the last slice of meat at the same time.

“You’re not feral animals, you know,” Sylvain admonished them once as they tussled around the floor.

But sometimes Felix felt like a feral animal, all heat and fear and anticipation. Sometimes he found himself longing for those senseless fights, even more so for the way they’d dissolve into laughter afterward, or collapse on the floor panting, or share a mug of hot chocolate until Felix stopped sniffling.

It would take more than hot chocolate to calm him down now. He and Dimitri had been in the training yard, practicing with wooden swords, Felix with the singleminded focus of a younger son who desperately wanted to do something—anything—better than his older brother.

“You don’t have to swing so hard,” Dimitri commented.

“ _You_ broke a practice sword yesterday,” Felix said, pleased by the prince’s embarrassed flush.

“I—that was an accident.” A string of accidents followed Dimitri everywhere. “I just mean that you don’t have to overdo it. We have plenty of time to train and get better.”

 _You don’t understand_ , Felix wanted to say, eyes already pricking with frustration.

“It’ll take a long time until you get as good as Glenn.”

And that did it. Felix’s mouth trembled, eyebrows scrunched together, and he threw the wooden sword to the floor before storming out. Dimitri didn’t sigh like his father did; he called his name tiredly, guiltily, knowing already what he’d done wrong.

But as Felix wandered the halls of the castle, he couldn’t find Sylvain. Ingrid was in Galatea with her parents, but Margrave Gautier and Duke Fraldarius were in Fhirdiad for a meeting with the king. Sylvain was notorious for slinking into the castle’s nooks and crannies to avoid Miklan’s unrelenting cruelty, but Felix couldn’t even find him in his usual spots.

His eyes burned. His nose itched. He rubbed a palm against his face as his breath hitched, the first sob catching in his throat.

He felt. He felt _so much_ , and he hated it, wished it was a thing he could cut out of his skin with a knife, make himself stronger for not feeling anything.

“Felix?”

He had settled down in one of Sylvain’s hiding spots, hoping to be found and comforted. The stone was cold against his back, the niche dark and untouched by torchlight. But when he looked up, it wasn’t red hair he found, but gold.

His upper lip curled. “Go away.”

Dimitri chewed his lower lip and came to sit next to Felix. “I’m sorry. I should have known saying that would upset you.”

 _But you said it anyway_.

“I only meant…” Dimitri did sigh this time, but it was a different sort of sigh than Rodrigue’s; not longsuffering, but rather at a loss. “It’s really important to you, isn’t it? Being as good as Glenn.”

Felix ran a sleeve under his nose and looked away. “That’s not it.”

“Then wh—”

“I want to be _better_ than Glenn. I want to challenge him and show him that I can do it, too.”

A rustle of Dimitri’s clothes. “Oh. Is that all?”

Felix whirled around, angry tears gathering on his lower lashes. “That—”

“Felix, of course you’re going to be better than him one day. I’ve seen you train.” The prince’s smile was hard to make out in the darkness, but Felix had felt it like a hand reaching for him, bracing him. “You accomplish everything you set your mind to. You can do anything. You’re amazing.”

He sat in stunned silence as Dimitri reached up and brushed the tears from his cheeks. Remembering the way the wooden sword had splintered in Dimitri’s hands yesterday, he couldn’t help but be astounded at how gentle the touch was.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said again.

They hadn’t launched themselves at one another. They hadn’t pushed or pouted or pulled on each other’s hair. Just…talked.

“It’s all right,” Felix whispered.

By the time Sylvain found them, they were huddled together against the stone wall, heads touching.

* * *

When Glenn’s mangled armor was brought back home, Felix didn’t cry.

He had spent all his life at the mercy of vicious feeling, talon-sharp and cutting, but seeing his brother’s armor—still stained with his blood—sucked it all out of him. Rodrigue cradled Glenn’s dented breastplate with empty eyes, as empty as Felix’s heart, barely even aware of his only remaining son in the room with him.

Felix had become a ghost in his own home. Aimless, purposeless, emotionless. Even the servants didn’t seem to see him, too busy whispering to one another about how awful it all was, about what would become of their country now that the king was dead, if they could hold on until the crown prince was of proper age to ascend.

He laid in bed and thought about his brother’s large and messy smile, Dimitri’s bright and curious eyes. Margrave Gautier came to pay respects and Sylvain folded Felix into a hug that stole his breath, but even then Felix didn’t cry. Sylvain’s warmth was the only thing that managed to creep through the pervasive numbness.

“Ingrid sent a letter,” Sylvain whispered that night as they curled up on the same bed, some unspoken need being answered. Felix was cold, had been cold for a long time, and he found that it helped. “She’s with Dimitri at the castle. She said he…he’s not doing well.”

Felix’s heart gave a painful thud, and it was almost a relief, realizing it hadn’t stopped beating after all.

“She’s been trying to talk to him, but…” Sylvain sighed, and it was far too heavy a sound for someone who’d barely lived fifteen years. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Felix agreed woodenly.

They didn’t travel to the capital until a week later, when the storms cleared and they could navigate horses through the snow. Felix didn’t know what to expect, what he’d see, what he could possibly say.

He didn’t expect to find Dimitri as withdrawn and numb as himself. To find those bright, blue eyes dulled to fogged glass, mouth unflinching, hair limp and unwashed. Felix felt cold, but Dimitri felt hot, radiating fumes like a fire barely contained.

The adults murmured behind closed doors. Felix found Dimitri sitting in a blue velvet chair in his rooms, staring out the window. No—at nothing.

There was nothing Felix could say, nothing Dimitri could say, that would be worth the exertion of pushing out words. There was nothing anyone had said to him up until now that had been worthwhile.

So he put his hand on top of Dimitri’s, like ice kissing the sun, and felt the flutter of prince’s pulse under his fingertips. A slight breath, a brief quiver of his eyelashes. Their fingers intertwining, holding on too tight, because there were no words in the world that would ever be enough.

* * *

He didn’t understand how bad it was until two years later, during their campaign to squash the rebellion growing in Duscur.

It was Felix’s first time in the world as a soldier, and not merely the son of one. The sword at his waist was both familiar and foreign, a weight dragging him down and a promise keeping him up. A chance to avenge Glenn. To serve his country the way his father so dearly wanted. To fight alongside his prince, his friend, to protect him from whatever harm sought him on the battlefield.

He wasn’t prepared for the taste of other peoples’ blood on his tongue, or the way pain crept up on you after a fight, a slight pang that turned into agony from some wound he didn’t know he’d received. He was introduced to viscera and how innards glistened when they slid from a torn-open belly. He heard screams in different pitches and tones. He learned what he himself sounded like when he charged on an opponent with blade raised and hatred in his heart.

But out of all the truths of the battlefield, what surprised him the most was Dimitri.

He’d assumed Dimitri had kept his grief curled close and cold to his heart, like Felix. Something too large for his body that he forced to contain within his chest despite the pain, despite the days it seemed like he couldn’t catch a full, complete breath.

He’d been wrong.

Dimitri wore his grief in a bloody cloak of rage, his lance arcing through the sunny sky like a crimson crescent moon, an eclipse coming to devour all of Duscur. He wielded that lance like it weighed nothing. Like it cost nothing to thrust it into something more substantial than air or training dummies.

Felix had seen him train; he knew of the prince’s strength. Dimitri had given him accidental bruises before, had gone a little too rough in the ring, but this…

This was brutality. Cruelty.

This was two years of grief coming out at last.

This was Dimitri showing his true face.

That face was frozen in a rictus grin of animal glee, washed in the blood of rebels, of those who had taken everything from him. He laid into the forces like wading through water, barely paying any mind to the execution of moves, making up for his movements’ flaws in pure undeniable power.

Dimitri sliced a man practically in half. Blood matted his golden hair to his scalp, blue eyes wide and unseeing, hands held in a death grip on his lance.

He began to laugh.

The laugh carried over the battlefield. It pierced Felix in the chest like an arrow. It made him stagger back, almost getting himself killed by an incoming Pegasus flyer with a halberd.

The laugh was inhuman. Inescapable.

Felix turned from the downed Pegasus, panting and blinking sweat from his eyes. Dimitri had paused his carnage to take in the sight of the retreating rebels, nearly every inch of him dripping blood, chest heaving for breath.

He felt Felix’s stare and turned to meet it. Those crystalline eyes could have bored a hole through Felix’s skull. Those fingers could have wrapped around his throat to end his pain with one fatal _snap_.

A shudder ran through him.

Dimitri looked at him like an enemy, like an ally, like something that needed to be broken. But Felix already felt himself shattering; felt the sword fall from numb fingers, knees weak and hitting the mud-churned earth.

He didn’t remember being shepherded to the healers’ tent. He only came back to himself when a spell washed over him, mending the worst of his injuries. Felix grabbed the healer’s arm.

“The prince,” he rasped.

Dimitri was pacing outside his tent, still dripping blood, still gripping his lance in a death grip. A couple of generals were trying to talk him down, exchanging a worried look behind Dimitri’s back.

Felix edged closer and heard Dimitri muttering to himself. He heard the name _Glenn_ and flinched back.

“Dimitri,” he said. “ _Dimitri_.”

But his prince made no sign of hearing him. Felix marched forward and grabbed the front of his damp shirt.

“Look at me!”

Dimitri looked through him. Like a ghost. Like another casualty that haunted his dreams. Dimitri grabbed his wrist and _squeezed_ , making Felix gasp and buckle as his hand was dislodged and thrown aside.

The generals muttered worriedly as Dimitri began to pace again. Felix scurried back, cradling his throbbing wrist.

He was well and truly gone.

 _You’re not feral animals, you know_ , Sylvain had once told them.

That had been before grief and duty and the truths of a battle. When all Felix had to worry about was improving his sword skills and trying not to cry in front of his father.

But now…

Now Dimitri was too far away for him to recognize. A monster who laughed as he slaughtered. A wild boar desperate to sink its tusks into flesh.

The world had been cruel enough, taking his brother from him. Now it had taken his best friend, too.

* * *

Life at the monastery wasn’t quite what he thought it would be. He had imagined strict regimens of training and classes, stern teachers, lectures about the sanctity of knighthood and the church.

Some of those things were true, but there was also an easy, lived-in air to the whole place, old and worn as it was. There were certainly lectures about knighthood and the teachings of Seiros—neither of which he gave a shit about—but there were also well-equipped training grounds and neverending missions to carry out.

His classmates were varied and strange, hailing from all over Fódlan. Some he knew, of course; Sylvain was in his house, as was Ingrid. He recognized the Adrestian princess and a couple of the Alliance noble children who had come to Fraldarius at one point or another during political tours.

And of course, there was Dimitri.

Felix stayed as far from him as he could get away with. Ignored the feeling of the prince’s eyes on him from time to time. Sneered whenever Dimitri put on that fake noble act, pretending he was anything other than a restless animal who craved blood.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Sylvain demanded one evening over dinner. “The two of you used to be inseparable.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Felix muttered.

 _You didn’t see him. See the thing he’s become_.

He still had dreams about it. Dimitri stalking over the bloody ground to grab him by the jaw, driving him to his knees as those bright eyes singed his skin. Sometimes he woke cold and terrified, other times hot and panting with an uncomfortable pressure in his stomach.

No matter his reaction to his dreams, his reaction to Dimitri in the waking world was always the same. When the professor put them together doing stable duty or yard work, Felix did his best to ignore his attempts at pleasant conversation, communicating in little more than growls and insults.

“Did you try the sausage at breakfast this morning?” Dimitri asked as they brushed down one of the horses. “It was on the spicier side, so I thought you’d probably enjoy it.”

Felix gritted his teeth, but the idiot kept going on about what he’d had for dinner the previous night, and then something about Mercedes giving him a fucking sewing lesson afterward.

“I kept bending the needles, I really should buy her some replacements—”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Felix finally snapped. The horse tossed its head nervously at his tone.

Dimitri flinched, eyes downcast. “I apologize, I just…I thought it would be nice to…catch up.”

Felix snorted, an indelicate sound. “Pointless.”

“Why is it pointless?”

“You know why.” Felix glared at him over the horse’s back. “You’re nothing but a boar. You don’t care about food or sewing or _catching up_. You only care about getting your precious revenge. You may have everyone else fooled, but not me. Never me.”

Dimitri met his eyes at last, and something flashed within them that stole Felix’s breath. He was so tired of this meeker, gentler façade—but for a moment he saw the truth within, the rage, the promise for violence.

It made him feel the way waking from his dreams felt, tight and breathless.

“Please,” Dimitri whispered. “Felix…”

And it did something to him, to hear Dimitri beg even as his eyes burned, knowing he would never be safe near this creature, no matter how soft his words.

The brush was shaking in his hand. Felix threw it to the ground.

“Finish the rest yourself,” he rasped before storming away.

It was even worse that Dimitri was now followed by Dedue, a silent, steadfast vassal who did anything Dimitri asked of him. It made Felix sick—not because the man was from Duscur, but because the servitude was so complete, so unchallenged.

Was everyone but Felix blind?

They were sent on missions together. They followed the professor’s strategies, even when it put them both on the front lines, Felix’s sword a blur beside Dimitri’s horse churning up grass and mud beneath its hooves.

He waited, and he watched. He kept an eye out for signs of the boar coming back, ripping off the skin of a tall, mild mannered boy and revealing the fangs beneath.

There was no repeat of Duscur. No rabid animal. But Felix still noticed the way Dimitri held onto his lance for a little too long, eyes boring intensely at downed brigands, fingers twitching for more.

During one mission outside the monastery, he was too preoccupied with the way Dimitri’s teeth flashed in the watery sunlight to see the steel aimed at his side.

Felix gasped and tried to block, but it was only half successful, and the sword cut through his ribs. He grabbed the brigand and kicked his knees out from under him, stabbing his own sword through the unfortunate man’s neck. A gurgling sound rose in the thief’s throat, blood splashing over Felix’s hand, warm and rewarding.

“Felix!”

He’d expected either Sylvain or Ingrid to cry out for him, rush to him, or even Annette with her pesky overexertion and fragile faith spells. Instead, a pair of too-strong arms wrapped around him and suddenly he was in the air.

He tried to fight against it, gasping at the pain lancing through his side.

“Stop that,” Dimitri snapped as he situated Felix in the saddle before him. A creak of leather and the horse was galloping off, breaths steaming in the air. Dimitri’s arms fenced Felix in, his head bouncing against Dimitri’s broad chest. Dimitri smelled like grass and blood and something from his childhood, the musk of the Fhirdiad castle settled stubbornly on his clothes.

“I don’t need help,” Felix growled, but resisted the urge to squirm away. He’d been bucked off a horse before, but he wasn’t anxious to find out what falling from a galloping one was like.

“Goddess, you’re impossible,” Dimitri muttered. “You’re bleeding _everywhere_.” Then quieter, perhaps not meant for Felix at all: “That was unlike you.”

Felix gritted his teeth and focused on the pain with every juddering step. He held a hand to his wound and felt blood seep through his fingers, warm and hungry. He must have gasped or groaned, because he felt Dimitri’s hand on top of his a second later.

“Just hang on,” Dimitri whispered. And it wasn’t exasperation or guilt in his voice, but fear, true and terrible. Something in Felix’s chest kicked to life.

By the time he was pulled off the horse and Mercedes was leaning over him, Felix’s vision was blackening, his extremities cold. Mercedes’s soft voice washed over him, and a tingling warmth began in his torso.

He didn’t even realize Dimitri was still there until he turned his head, finding the prince knelt beside him, hand still within his own. Felix’s blood between their palms.

“Stupid…boar,” Felix said, or tried to say. “Go…”

He couldn’t finish. Words were jumbled in his mouth.

“I’m not leaving you,” Dimitri said stubbornly. Almost petulantly.

Felix made an indistinct noise as his eyelids grew heavier, that warmth seeping through him, and it was the opposite of relief, because that thing in his chest needed to stay dead.

* * *

No matter how often Felix looked back on what had led them to this war, he still couldn’t properly fathom it. The Flame Emperor. Edelgard. The division between classes, nations, nobles. The death of the professor and the capture of Rhea.

Dimitri’s absence.

Those five years were a blur of blood and pain. He and Sylvain scouting the borders of Gautier and Fraldarius, eradicating Imperial soldiers and spies. Visiting Ingrid and finding her territory on the verge of starvation. Evading Fhirdiad and the memories and horror lurking within.

And then. And then.

It had been such a stupid promise, one he hadn’t ever intended to keep. But Sylvain had practically kicked down his door and dragged him out into the cold to his horse.

“We promised,” Sylvain insisted.

“We promised a dead person,” Felix spat. “There’s no point going back to the monastery.”

“Please,” Sylvain pleaded, and those stupid brown eyes had been so big and sad, knocking down Felix’s careful defenses.

So they had ridden to the monastery together from their territories, Felix in a black mood the entire way, knowing they would find nothing but rubble and promises unfulfilled.

Yet somehow, _somehow_ , they hadn’t been the only ones. The entire class had come. The professor was _alive_.

And Dimitri…

Fuck, Dimitri.

Part of him wanted to run forward into that mass of black armor and ratty fur cloak. To lift that eyepatch and stare into the void of his missing eye—how had he even lost it? To yell at him and beat at his chest and curse him for everything that had ever gone wrong.

But Dimitri couldn’t even properly look at him. He looked through him, the way he had before, the way he always seemed destined to.

Felix wasn’t sure what he felt more: anger, guilt, relief that he was not the only one who knew now. He saw everyone stare at Dimitri with fear, sadness, pity. Even Sylvain’s eyes trailed after their prince—their _king_ —with helplessness.

Everyone now knew the thing inside Dimitri was violent and unable to be satiated. He wanted blood. Vengeance. He would tear down anyone who got in his way, even his friends, even his allies.

“Why is it that we’re following the command of an animal?” Felix snarled after one of the war council meetings. It was just him and Ingrid, the others having already left after the abrupt departure of Dimitri.

“Felix,” Ingrid scolded. “He’s the king.”

“Not yet. Not until we can recapture Fhirdiad and win this fucking war. Which looks more and more impossible the longer he stays a slave to the dead.”

Ingrid sighed. “He’s been through a lot. He just…needs some time to heal.”

But they had all been through a fucking lot. Felix thought back to the memory of Glenn’s armor in his father’s lap.

Still, he couldn’t help but follow Dimitri with his eyes, with his guarded steps. To watch from between the columns of the broken cathedral as the boar prince paced and muttered to himself, revisiting the names of the dead, the names of those who haunted his every waking moment.

“I will tear them apart with my own hands,” Dimitri whispered into the moonlit-scattered darkness, voice magnified in the large space. “I will make sure you can rest peacefully, knowing they are dead.”

Felix merely watched him, arms crossed, sword expectant at his hip.

He was ready to use it, if he needed to.

He must have made a sound, because Dimitri whirled toward him. “Who’s there?”

That low, powerful voice shook Felix loose. He somehow made himself step forward into a shaft of moonlight. “It’s just me, boar.”

Dimitri relaxed, but only marginally. Somehow it only served to piss Felix off more.

“Don’t let me interrupt your little ritual,” he said with a curl of his upper lip. “Your pleadings to people who can’t even hear you because they’re fucking _dead_.”

Dimitri’s eye glimmered, but he said nothing, did nothing. Felix stalked forward.

“Did you hear me?” Felix half-yelled. “Do you _ever_ hear me?”

The anger was white hot, pounding through his head. He pushed at Dimitri’s chest, but the man barely moved.

“Go ahead,” Felix snarled. “Fucking kill me too, if it’ll make you feel better. Is that what you want? The relief of spilling blood, no matter who it belongs to?”

Dimitri just stared at him. Stared _through_ him.

Felix wrapped his hands around his king’s neck and squeezed.

He thought he might understand, a little, how Dimitri felt. The release felt _good_. All the rage, all the despair, sharpened down to one single action of choking the breath from Dimitri’s lungs.

Dimitri made a strangely feeble sound against his thumbs. But he didn’t fight back. He just stood there, staring at Felix a little more clearly now, allowing himself to be at the mercy of his destruction.

Felix uttered a scream that echoed through the cathedral and let go, backing away with heaving gasps. He sobbed, but no tears came. He was dry. He was cold.

Dimitri’s breath was ragged, bruises already ringing his pale throat.

Felix turned and fled, feeling that single blue eye following until he was gone.

* * *

Their victory against the latest barrage of Imperial troops was a narrow thing. It was raining and miserable, the ground slippery with mud, the gloom making it harder for archers to sight their shots properly.

But they did it. They decimated another of Edelgard’s generals, and whoever remained had successfully retreated. Dimitri made to chase after, but Gilbert and Dedue managed to stop him.

Felix limped past the healer’s tent and briefly considered going inside. He probably should—he felt a twinge in his leg—but a quick assessment of his own body told him all his injuries were superficial. And judging by the wailing and groaning coming from the tent, there were others who clearly needed the attention more.

He ducked into his own tent and merely stood there a moment, gathering his breath and his thoughts. He always felt emptied out after a good fight, scraped clean, mind blissfully blank. His sword still hung from numb fingers, mostly clean thanks to the rain.

The sounds of the camp felt faraway and distant under the shush of the rain. He heard a faint jangle and the calling of soldiers. He heard his own heart beating painfully slow in his chest.

How much longer, he wondered, could he hold them back? How much longer could they stand against the Empire’s might, led by little more than a rabid dog?

The tent flap opened behind him. Felix half-turned, mouth already open to reprimand Sylvain for not going to the healer’s tent; he’d seen the hit he’d taken by that brawler.

But it wasn’t Sylvain. Dimitri stood looming against the tent flap, dripping wet. Felix swallowed as his stomach writhed; he often forget just how large Dimitri was when he wasn’t standing beside Dedue.

There was a stark, mindless look on Dimitri’s face. He stared at Felix as if staring at an offering he’d neither expected nor deserved. There was still a furious twist to his mouth, as if it were Felix’s fault he couldn’t pursue the deserters and rip the heads from their shoulders.

The sword shook in Felix’s hand. Cold water ran from his hair and down his neck, making him shudder.

He wanted to ask what Dimitri was doing. What he wanted from him now. Why he was just fucking standing there, large and lethal and capable of breaking Felix in half if he had a mind to.

And then Dimitri was lunging forward, grabbing him. Felix tried to swing his sword, but a simple twist of Dimitri’s fingers on his wrist and it fell to the ground as pain shot through his arm. He gasped as Dimitri pulled him in close and bit his neck.

The breath rushed out of him. Painful heat shot through every inch of his body, so much so he thought he’d been hit by a Levin sword, electrocuted on the spot. Dimitri’s teeth were merciless against his flesh, the warmth of his tongue shocking.

Felix was wild with adrenaline. He bucked and thrashed in Dimitri’s hold, panting like a captured animal, fingernails scraping uselessly against hard armor. Dimitri grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, holding him in place as he lavished more bites across his throat.

_This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening…_

And then: _This is happening._

_I want it to happen._

_I've been waiting for it to happen._

Dimitri growled at the hindrance of Felix’s clothing. The sound of ripping fabric tore through the tent, as sharp as a blade through his ribs.

“Fuck!” Felix whimpered before Dimitri’s gauntlets were pawing over his skin, leaving pale welts with their sharp points. Dimitri fumbled to pull them off, scarred and callused fingertips retracing red, stinging lines up Felix’s sides and back.

He was senseless. He was confused. He was terrified. He was electric.

Dimitri barely seemed to know what he was doing either. He was quivering with unused energy, greedy for anything to shred into, to put his body to use. He shoved Felix to the ground and bit at his exposed skin, growling again as Felix arched into it, body betraying him.

 _You’re disgusting_ , he told himself as his mouth hung open, eyes widely fixed on the tent’s ceiling. _You’re honestly going to become the beast’s whore, now?_

Fingers stabbed into him, making him howl.

It was too overwhelming, too exposing, too painful. He tried to writhe away, but Dimitri kept him in place with a hand against his stomach, fucking him open with insistent, slick fingers. There was nothing human in his expression, teeth bared and breath shuddering. A great, lumbering animal seeking his own pleasure.

Saliva fell from Felix’s mouth, hips stuttering against Dimitri’s hand. He didn’t want it like this—he’d never thought of having it like this—

But his cock was hard and flushed against his stomach, already leaking. It damned him. Shamed him.

He wanted this so fucking bad.

When Dimitri’s fingers finally pulled out, Felix rolled onto his stomach and halfheartedly tried to scramble away. His heart raced with the thought of a chase, of being hunted, and sure enough Dimitri pounced, grabbing him by the hips and dragging him back. Felix clawed at the ground, whimpers falling from his mouth as Dimitri’s large form crowded him from above.

A sharp bite on the nape of his neck, and a single hard thrust from behind.

Felix screamed against his arm, pain arcing up his spine, cradling him almost lovingly. The restless energy of post-battle was merging with the dangerous heat in his belly, making it seem as if he’d never stopped fighting, that this was still a duel to the death. Dimitri’s cock was going to break him in half. It was going to kill him.

He fumbled behind him and grabbed Dimitri’s hair, pulling hard. Dimitri snarled and snapped his hips.

Felix knew he was being used, and later he might care about that, but right now he had dead people’s blood on his skin and a fire in his gut and Dimitri inside of him, and nothing else really mattered.

Dimitri pinned his wrists to the ground and fucked him like he meant it, like he knew Felix could take it. Felix tried to muffle his wails, tears falling from the corners of his eyes as his cock bounced against his stomach. It didn’t make sense for it to feel so good even when it hurt so damn much.

“Dimitri,” he cried, and he couldn’t tell if it was a desperate plea to stop or to keep going.

Dimitri gasped against his ear, one hand buried in Felix’s loose hair, the other leaving bruises on his hip. The two of them found the right rhythm, the sound of wet slapping filling the tent, mocking Felix and making his skin burn. The angle set off a brilliant spark of pleasure deep within him. He arched and pushed his hips against Dimitri’s, feeling the scrape of armor against his bare back.

“Fuck,” he keened as drool fell from his lips. “Fuck…”

He came, hard, shuddering, as if expelling everything—his name, his purpose, his fucking soul. There was only blackness and the crackling heat of relief, freedom. Dimitri kept him there longer than necessary, still not done with him, burying himself in Felix’s oversensitive body until Felix was writhing and sobbing again, begging for it to end, for it to never stop.

Dimitri shuddered and held him against the cold expanse of his armored chest. His breaths were hoarse and fast. One of them sounded like the ghost of Felix’s name.

Felix collapsed as soon as he was let go. His body kept twitching, dead weight, unable to move, tears and snot drying on his face. Dimitri loomed over him, hesitating. One hand reached down to brush hair away from Felix’s damp cheek.

“Leave,” Felix snapped, or tried to. It came out more of a wheeze.

Dimitri froze. One moment his presence was there, and the next it was gone, tent flap emitting a rush of wind that caressed his battered body.

Felix curled up and stared at nothing, the warmth gradually fading from his limbs to be replaced with bitter cold.

* * *

They kept advancing. They kept fighting. They kept winning.

Dimitri kept muttering and pacing in the cathedral.

Felix kept avoiding him.

He had hoped that something had untangled in that tent. That brief, gentle touch. The hitch in Dimitri’s breath.

He had thought maybe he was enough to…

Well. It didn’t fucking matter.

Until Gronder Field. Until his entire life was upended again.

He couldn’t sear the image of Dimitri weeping over his dying father out of his mind. That stupid, pitiful old man, who thought knighthood was the greatest gift, who treasured servitude in a way that made Felix physically ill.

And of course his last words hadn’t been to his only remaining son. They had been for a vicious animal who didn’t even know what to do with them.

Felix felt the others’ eyes graze him. Hands reach out for him. He hid himself away. He yelled at anyone who got too close.

Back at the monastery, he destroyed his room.

It was tediously simple to do. A swing of his sword, and the chair was in pieces. A single punch and the window shattered into glittering points like deadly diamonds. Scores and gouges littered the walls, the floor, his bed a snarl of ripped fabric and feathers.

“Felix!”

Arms around him, pinning his own to his sides. He growled and thrashed, but Sylvain held him tighter.

“Stop! You’re hurting yourself.”

The sword clattered to the floor as he caught his breath. His hands were red and burning. His muscles twinged.

“He didn’t even fucking look at me,” Felix gasped.

“I know,” Sylvain whispered, leaning their heads together. “I know. It’s so messed up. I’m so sorry…”

Felix’s throat was tight and aching. He couldn’t stand this anymore. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.

His family was gone. He was all that was left.

This war had taken everything from him.

He slept in Sylvain’s room as its owner’s insistence—“What the fuck did you do to your bed? You can’t sleep on that”—and it was like when Glenn died, the two of them curled up against grief and loss, not sure what to do.

But gradually Felix’s hot rage died down to that familiar cold, another star dying inside him.

He spent days in a fugue. There were no new missions, or else no one told him about any. His muscles were tight and unable to relax. He found himself wandering the monastery with no purpose, no direction.

Duke Fraldarius, one of the knights called him.

He wanted to punch him until he bled.

Felix was standing on the bridge outside the cathedral, the wind howling through and ruffling his hair, when he heard his name.

His shoulders tensed. Dimitri was the last fucking person he wanted to see, and yet here he was, coming down the steps toward him.

Sylvain and Ingrid had told him that Dimitri seemed better. Clearer, somehow, as if a fog had lifted. Felix hadn’t believed them, but now he had to admit that Dimitri seemed…lucid. His remaining eye wasn’t burning in fever, his fingers weren’t itching for a weapon. He seemed deflated. Smaller. Sadder.

“Felix,” Dimitri said again as he joined him. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

Felix clenched his jaw. “Then don’t fucking say anything.”

“But…” Dimitri took a deep breath, and Felix again had to stare, realizing he wasn’t looking at the boar—he was looking at the remnants of someone he thought had died five years ago. No, ten years ago.

“His last words…they should have been for you,” Dimitri whispered. “Rodrigue was a good man who served his kingdom with everything he had, but that last act was too selfish for me to ever forgive.”

Felix blinked, his heart stuttering. He couldn’t possibly be hearing him right.

“I understand that you hate me,” Dimitri went on, staring out at the monastery, at the forest below the bridge. “I would hate me, too, in your shoes. I just needed you to know that you’re not alone, Felix. Glenn is gone…Rodrigue is gone…but we are still here for you. All of us.” He swallowed. “If you’ll have us.”

Dimitri turned away; not toward the cathedral, but toward the main hall. Felix’s fingers curled into his palms.

“Dimitri,” Felix said.

The name was nearly eaten by the wind, but Dimitri heard and turned to him.

“I don’t…” That thing in his chest kicked and unfurled, despite the pain, despite the anger. “I don’t hate you. But don’t make me start.”

Dimitri’s lips parted, and part of Felix wanted to slap him and part of him wanted to run his fingers over their soft shape.

A small, sad huff of laughter escaped Dimitri before he bowed. It could have been a mocking gesture, but Felix knew it wasn’t. “I will do my best.”

* * *

Winning a war came with complex emotions. Relief, joy, grief, guilt. Standing in the streets of Enbarr, their conquest official, Felix could still smell blood and smoke in the air.

The Emperor was dead. The Kingdom was safe.

He would return home and become Duke Fraldarius.

He had no idea how to run a territory. Sylvain had been making comments lately—“Hey, maybe after the war is over I can vacation in Fraldarius for a while”—in a clumsy yet appreciated attempt to let Felix know he didn’t have to return alone.

But he needed to go to Fhirdiad first. Dimitri needed to be coronated, and Felix was officially one of his advisors. They had a lot of work ahead of them.

It was daunting. But it could be done.

He’d been subjected to worse.

He was aimlessly wandering through the palace’s gardens when he found Dimitri standing in a gazebo overlooking the spring blossoms. The flowers seemed gaudily bright and vibrant against the bloodshed they’d caused to get here. Dimitri looked over his shoulder and smiled wearily at the sight of him.

“Felix,” he rumbled. The sound of his name in that warm, low voice made heat curl in his stomach. “How are you?”

“I should be asking you that.” Felix came to stand beside him at the rail, eyeing the flowers he had no name for. It was far warmer here in Enbarr than in Faerghus, allowing the growth of different flora and fauna. “After what you had to do.”

Dimitri nodded, solemn. “It had to be done. We…We all need to move on from this. To focus on strengthening Fódlan for everyone. Not just the Kingdom. I..." He took a deep breath, shaking his head. "I mistreated so many of you. I mistreated _you_. Can you ever forgive me?"

Felix studied his profile, the strong, regal lines of him. He thought about the boy he’d known in the castle, who he fought with and yelled at and shared hot chocolate with. The boy who had been lost to the animal, and somehow found his way back.

All that strength, and he’d finally found a use for it.

Dimitri turned and stared. When he reached out, his thumb brushed against Felix’s cheek and came away wet.

“Felix,” he whispered again, and it only made Felix cry harder, his vision blurred and warped by everything he couldn’t put into words.

Dimitri held him close as he sobbed. For everything they had lost. For all the time they had been denied. That they had only been able to communicate through pain.

But Dimitri’s words had curled around his heart, reminding him over and over that even though he missed his family, how things used to be, he would never be alone.

Dimitri’s hand was gentle against the back of his head. Felix calmed down gradually, sniffing and wiping aggressively at his face. Dimitri laughed, not unkindly, and brushed his thumbs over his face again.

“You’ve always gotten so red when you cry,” Dimitri said.

“Shut up,” Felix mumbled.

Another breathy laugh. They looked at one another, king and duke, friends and enemies, reforged so many times it was a miracle neither of them had broken.

Dimitri leaned down and pressed his lips gently to Felix’s. Felix closed his eyes and let himself relax, finally relax, winding his arms around Dimitri’s neck as their bodies pressed together. He opened his mouth and Dimitri tilted his chin back to properly devour him, too distracted by the heat, the intimacy, to be embarrassed by the needy whine in his throat.

It was difficult to say how long he’d wanted this, only that now he had it, he never wanted to lose it again.

Dimitri kissed him until he was dizzy and hot, then pulled back and pressed his lips to Felix’s brow.

 _They’re both me_ , Dimitri had told him shortly after his father died, talking about the beast and the boy it had overtaken. A questing, vulnerable admission, allowing Felix to accept it or not.

He could accept it. He already had.

He always would.


End file.
